Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Jackson Ward 1 City Councilman Ashby Foote told the City Council yesterday to quit looking at raising taxes or furloughing employees and instead collect the $20 million already owed to the city on water and sewer bills:

All good until Ashby said that putting JPD in charge of collecting overdue water & sewer bills represented "out-of-the-box" thinking. ROFLMAO Hey Ashby, why don't we put JPD in charge of fixing water pipe leaks too?

The City Council is a joke. Absolute JOKE! On one hand you got Foote saying collect bills owed to the city. That money is lost. You can't collect any money from welfare folks, dishonest landlords, or crack house owners. Just shut off the water faster. and lock down the water meter whereby the good peeples of Jackson can't turn it back on. Then you got Stokes renaming every street to honor drive by shooting victims and crying about how the state needs to bail out Jackson for overspending. Mayor, City Council don't you see you are the ones who destroyed Jackson NOT the White people. Mayor City Council don't you see the Seimens Water meter project is a big scam that you'all swallowed hook line and sinker.

Ashby's comments are very well taken. Glad someone is looking at alternatives to raising the Jackson tax millage rate. I appreciate Councilman Foote's efforts to bring some business sense to the process.

Kinda hard to enforce water bill payment when there is no late fee or penalty for late payment. Stamps proposed removing all penalties when rates went up last year so people could pay on their schedule without being hurt too bad all at once. It was approved by the Council.

We used to own a water company and my mother ran it. People pay their water bill, or you pull the meter. It's mechanically real simple. The threat of having the meter pulled collects a lot of it for you. And for those that you never collect, at least you aren't furnishing them your product for free anymore. You don't spend a lot of time trying to collect money. You send bills. If they aren't paid, you pull the meter. Again, it's pretty simple.

Why charge for water. EVERYTHING else is nearly free. School lunches, rented housing, a good portion of store bought food, Christmas gifts, Holiday Meals, clothing that includes school uniforms, School Supplies, Free phones and free dental care. Medical bills aren't paid and it doesn't matter because the credit is beyond repair. Ever notice there's an awful lot of $100 bills being presented at the cash registers come payday? I've had close to 40 of them in my register drawer at one time at a Jackson Walmart and not one single customer or their kids appeared to be suffering. Clothing, nails and hair were pristine. I know for a fact these customers are not employed. Makes me wonder why a bother coming to work every day.

I rented a house in Jackson last year and called them paranoid about paying the water bill before it got shut off because the water was not in my name and I wasn't getting the bill. Told them I wanted to make sure I paid everything that was owed so it wouldn't get shut off. The girl on the other line laughed and said Oh don't worry sir we don't cut anyone's water off. I was amazed.

Rankin County enforces Garbage charges through its License Plate fees, why can't Jackson enforce Water Dept bills through JPD? It's gotten to be a criminal level of abuse and neglect. $20M exceeds the current $15M shortfall...you have a better solution?

Anyone who disagrees with JPD taking on Water Dept enforcement is part of the problem. Do you honestly think there is a better solution? What's your option? Just let the Water Dept figure it out? You can't fire those people. You can't count on the Mayor to fix your problems.

Anyone who thinks an already understaffed Jackson Police Department whose Job #1 is public safety should be the collection arm of the Water Department is completely out of their minds. If that is the best Ashby Foote has to offer then he, like Yarber, is completely outmatched by the job.

Number one: When the Water Meter is pulled, the people know how to go to the hardware store and buy fittings and pipe to continue receiving water.

Number two: Jackson has had some water meter readers who would take cash for reading the meters wrong or for not reporting hot-shot meters.

Number three: There are people working in the water billing department who will let Aunts,Cousins, etc. pay less than is owed.

The new automatic meter reading is going to help reduce water theft. Can't say much else good about the Siemens' Contract.

Sewer usage cannot be stopped; there is no way to stop the gravity flow. Not sure about garbage pick up. All of these services are on what is referred to as the "Water Bill".

A large percentage of the water bills owed can probably be collected. Particularly if some type of lien, can be placed on their tax refunds or something else. Many of the bills will never be collected as the people are dead or in prison, or otherwise missing. Madison is not far enough away to escape. If your bill was a mistake, which is happening often during this change over, get it straightened out.

As far as Stokes goes, keep talking. We are all embarrassed by him and his antics. But so far, no one in his ward has been able to defeat him. Sad that his type of thought is still receiving so much attention. I compare him to some of the white yahoos who embarrass me with their behavior. There does not seem to be a cure for their need to garner attention and there are those who willing oblige their egos with plenty of attention, albeit negative.

Really? WTF? Make no mistake, we don't use this much water. Our sin is that we have a 39211 zip code. We have called the water department several time and talked to "Mrs. So & So", asked for a correction only to be told the meter is correct and pay the bill. So now I see there is as much as $20,000,000.00 owed by slackers to the city and the best that dumbass mayor can do is raise the rates on us that ACTUALLY our bills? I have never seen such a collection of stupid people in my life....really....

I have never gotten a bill for my irrigation meter since it was changed out last year. I call the water department every other month to report this issue and do the right thing. They say they'll investigate, but nothing has changed. No bill. I expect I'll be getting a bill at some point with lots of zeros on it.

"A large percentage of the water bills owed can probably be collected. Particularly if some type of lien, can be placed on their tax refunds or something else. "

Tax refunds? You mean like cut off their EITC? That might work.

I can't tell if 4:23 is a genuine moron or just doing a bad job making fun or morons. But when Detroit started disconnecting deadbeats the United Nations got involved, saying that water is a human right, yada yada yada....

This may not get posted, but I have to say it. I didn't abandon Jackson, it abandoned me. I was born and raised in Jackson and lived there until a few years ago. After numerous thefts of property, house being burglarized several times, outrageous property taxes, horrible streets, kids being abused at schools (not by teachers), rude & uninformed city employees and a laundry list of other problems, I made the sad decision to leave my home. The problems started at least twenty five years ago and have only gotten worse. With a few exceptions, the people running city departments as well as those under them are incompetent. Their attitude has nothing to do with performing their job correctly, but rather acting like fools and collecting a check. Jackson didn't have these problems 40, 50 or 60 plus years ago. Now the scum think the city owes them everything free. The city fathers seem to agree. $20,000,000.00 in past due water bills? Absolute craziness! Go ahead and raise taxes. In two years you'll have to double them to make up for those that pulled out. You'll have to keep doing so until one day the entire tax base will be gone. Fix the problem. Hire smart, competent and ethical people. Please save my hometown!

People stealing water by piping around the meter need to be arrested by the police and shown the inside of a jail cell. There can be no excuse for theft from the City. Poverty is not an entitlement to dishonesty or theft. Enforce the law Jackson! Enforce the law Mayor! Throw the thieves---all of them who are stealing Jackson's water--in JAIL.

@12:28I guess they need to throw the busted water pipes along with the wet streets in jail too!F***ing dumbass. You go and buy a jail big enough for all the people you want locked up. I'll sit back and wait for that shiznit to never happen.I guess you don't know that the corrupt city government made a deal with a corrupt multinational corporation and now you're seeing the fallout. The list of countries just off the top of my head that have been documented over the years of Siemens global corruption:GreeceEgypt Iraq.

If anybody needs to be investigated, it's the people that voted in favor of that contract.Of course you don't care about that aspect- you just bust a nut at the thought of people going to jail over some f***ing water.There are bribery cases of political officials documented by this very company on a world wide basis that's undeniable.Billion dollar fines and convictions.Here's something for ya, flipper.------ I wonder how much money was passed under the table for those votes?You can sit here and try to contain the situation on this website, but the information is there for all to see.

Water leak bubbling at surface on Ridgewood in front of Spann at least 8 days now. Still leaking this morning. Those are dollars washing into the storm drain back into the Pearl River. Yarber administration is riddled with incompetence.

Our water rates approach those of New York City. In fact our rates are the highest in the South at $3.21/100 CcF. And NYC is $3.70. Other comparable markets to Jackson are half our rate and you actually pay LESS the more water you use. So let's review what are band of city incompetents have done to date:1. 50% rate increase2. Automate the meters3. Declare a FEMA emergency4. Propose an 8% property tax increase5. Pass a sales tax increase

And the result? More debt and the infrastructure continues to fail. And now we find out the city does not even collect what they are owed.

Can you say DETROIT! We promise we will leave just as soon as we can sell the house. We promise. Unfortunately we are having s hard time finding anyone stupid enough to buy in NEJ.. Of course Detroit did reach the point they could find no one to buy the abandoned homes even for a dollar!

2:50 am: Large, multi dimensional problems can still be solved, one part at a time. Part of the problem is people straight piping past City meters. So the solution there is to make a start arresting some of them so others will move to correct it or be deterred from straight piping. It is not an answer to ignore the thefts of City water. Ashby is proposing taking action to start on addressing a problem that must be addressed--not give in to barbarism. Part of the problem has been the Siemans contract. City legal needs to address that to the extent Siemans fails to make meter corrections. And make better contracts from now on. But Asby is trying to get at the revenue problem. Starting with stopping the stealing of City water is an important start to fixing the revenue short fall. One problem at a time. One day at a time, but Ashby should continue to push hard for action. We should all be supportive of his efforts to correct these problems with an action plan.

The issue is the city incompetence. The meter issue was just a few meters that read in gallons, very few compared to the total.

The billing issue is that no one in the Water department is smart enough to figure out how to add/subtract. I received a new water meter in July 2014. I was billed from that time to January 2015, what appears to be, correctly. I received a bill in March 2015 that showed my previous meter reading at 95K ft3 and current at 5K ft3. In the March billing period, they seemed to have loaded the last billing from the old meter (July 2014) and then added the difference to 100K ft3 plus the 5K ft3 that was used from July, when the new meter was added, to March. Effectively billing me nearly 3 times for the same water usage.

The fact that meters are bypassed would seem to suggest that meter readers were not reporting this fact if it was recognizable.

8:31Indeed it was the barbarians who destroyed Rome by taking down the last water acqueduct, causing the City of Rome to contract from over a million to a village living in the ruins. Can't let the barbarians win here. Arrest enough water thieves to make the point that Jackson is still civilized. Ashby please stick with it.

those that owe past due water bills are voters so cannot press them very hard. There are a lot of tricks to keep from paying water bills. When water is turned off, customer turns it back on. meter is locked and then customer cuts lock. Meter is removed then customer puts in a straight pipe. on and on. Then, customer gets a cousin or friend to go to water department and say they just moved in and need water service. Parents also use child's SS number or anyone else's SS number. It is like trying to get rid of roaches by stomping them. No end. Now, question is if the city is trying to do all those things. I think probably not. They are voters.

Don't be fooled. There are a minimum of 4 votes on the Council right now, probably 5, for increasing property taxes. It is too easy to dodge the massive problems that way and that is why Yarber is proposing the approach because he's long on talk and way short on courageous action. Plain old issue avoidance from our elementary school Principal.

Yarber will pay $27.33 more annually in his property taxes while Foote's bill, for instance, goes up by $185.41. This is nothing more than a taking from the few remaining neighborhoods of value in a city headed down the exact same path doing the exact same things as they did in Detroit.

And next year the other shoe in the scam will drop when the HindsCo Tax Assessor's office comes up with a bullshit rationale for jacking up assessments even further.

It would be helpful if the Hinds Co Tax Assessor's office would raise the assessed values of homes west of State Street, too. Leaving them at rock bottom values while increasing NE Jackson home values is another obvious mechanism of wealth redistribution.

Jackson, the poorest capital city in the U.S., seems destined to become a ghost town. Why would any intelligent and sane person want to live here? I am almost at the point of being willing to walk away from my entire equity (which I'll never recover anyway)just to leave this place.

Who is the Hottest Reporter in Jackson?

Trollfest '09

Trollfest '07 was such a success that Jackson Jambalaya will once again host Trollfest '09. Catch this great event which will leave NE Jackson & Fondren in flames. Othor Cain and his band, The Black Power Structure headline the night while Sonjay Poontang returns for an encore performance. Former Frank Melton bodyguard Marcus Wright makes his premier appearance at Trollfest singing "I'm a Sweet Transvestite" from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Kamikaze will sing his new hit, “How I sold out to da Man.” Robbie Bell again performs: “Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Bells” and “Any friend of Ed Peters is a friend of mine”. After the show, Ms. Bell will autograph copies of her mug shot photos. In a salute to “Dancing with the Stars”, Ms. Bell and Hinds County District Attorney Robert Smith will dance the Wango Tango.

Wrestling returns, except this time it will be a Battle Royal with Othor Cain, Ben Allen, Kim Wade, Haley Fisackerly, Alan Lange, and “Big Cat” Donna Ladd all in the ring at the same time. The Battle Royal will be in a steel cage, no time limit, no referee, and the losers must leave town. Marshand Crisler will be the honorary referee (as it gives him a title without actually having to do anything). Meet KIM Waaaaaade at the Entergy Tent. For five pesos, Kim will sell you a chance to win a deed to a crack house on Ridgeway Street stuffed in the Howard Industries pinata. Don't worry if the pinata is beaten to shreds, as Mr. Wade has Jose, Emmanuel, and Carlos, all illegal immigrants, available as replacements for the it. Upon leaving the Entergy tent, fig leaves will be available in case Entergy literally takes everything you have as part of its Trollfest ticket price adjustment charge.

Donna Ladd of The Jackson Free Press will give several classes on learning how to write. Smearing, writing without factchecking, and reporting only one side of a story will be covered. A donation to pay their taxes will be accepted and she will be signing copies of their former federal tax liens. Ms. Ladd will give a dramatic reading of her two award-winning essays (They received The Jackson Free Press "Best Of" awards.) "Why everything is always about me" and "Why I cover murders better than anyone else in Jackson".

In the spirit of helping those who are less fortunate, Trollfest '09 adopts a cause for which a portion of the proceeds and donations will be donated: Keeping Frank Melton in his home. The “Keep Frank Melton From Being Homeless” booth will sell chances for five dollars to pin the tail on the jackass. John Reeves has graciously volunteered to be the jackass for this honorable excursion into saving Frank's ass. What's an ass between two friends after all? If Mr. Reeves is unable to um, perform, Speaker Billy McCoy has also volunteered as when the word “jackass” was mentioned he immediately ran as fast as he could to sign up. In order to help clean up the legal profession, Adam Kilgore of the Mississippi Bar will be giving away free, round-trip plane tickets to the North Pole where they keep their bar complaint forms (which are NOT available online). If you don't want to go to the North Pole, you can enjoy Brant Brantley's (of the Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance) free guided tours of the quicksand field over by High Street where all complaints against judges disappear. If for some reason you are unable to control yourself, never fear; Judge Houston Patton will operate his jail where no lawyers are needed or allowed as you just sit there for minutes... hours.... months...years until he decides he is tired of you sitting in his jail. Do not think Judge Patton is a bad judge however as he plans to serve free Mad Dog 20/20 to all inmates.

Trollfest '09 is a pet-friendly event as well. Feel free to bring your dog with you and do not worry if your pet gets hungry, as employees of the Jackson Zoo will be on hand to provide some of their animals as food when it gets to be feeding time for your little loved one.

Relax at the Fox News Tent. Since there are only three blonde reporters in Jackson (being blonde is a requirement for working at Fox News), Megan and Kathryn from WAPT and Wendy from WLBT will be on loan to Fox. To gain admittance to the VIP section, bring either your Republican Party ID card or a Rebel Flag. Bringing both and a torn-up Obama yard sign will entitle you to free drinks served by Megan, Wendy, and Kathryn. Get your tickets now. Since this is an event for trolls, no ID is required. Just bring the hate. Bring the family, Trollfest '09 is for EVERYONE!!!

This is definitely a Beaver production.Note: Security provided by INS.

Trollfest '07

Jackson Jambalaya is the home of Trollfest '07. Catch this great event which promises to leave NE Jackson & Fondren in flames. Sonjay Poontang and his band headline the night with a special steel cage, no time limit "loser must leave town" bout between Alan Lange and "Big Cat"Donna Ladd following afterwards. Kamikaze will perform his new song F*** Bush, he's still a _____. Did I mention there was no referee? Dr. Heddy Matthias and Lori Gregory will face off in the undercard dueling with dangling participles and other um, devices. Robbie Bell will perform Her two latest songs: My Best Friends are in the Media and Mama's, Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to be George Bell. Sid Salter of The Clarion-Ledger will host "Pin the Tail on the Trial Lawyer", sponsored by State Farm.

There will be a hugging booth where in exchange for your young son, Frank Melton will give you a loooong hug. Trollfest will have a dunking booth where Muhammed the terrorist will curse you to Allah as you try to hit a target that will drop him into a vat of pig grease. However, in the true spirit of Separate But Equal, Don Imus and someone from NE Jackson will also sit in the dunking booth for an equal amount of time. Tom Head will give a reading for two hours on why he can't figure out who the hell he is. Cliff Cargill will give lessons with his .80 caliber desert eagle, using Frank Melton photos as targets. Tackleberry will be on hand for an autograph session. KIM Waaaaaade will be passing out free titles and deeds to crackhouses formerly owned by The Wood Street Players.

If you get tired come relax at the Fox News Tent. To gain admittance to the VIP section, bring either your Republican Party ID card or a Rebel Flag. Bringing both will entitle you to free drinks.Get your tickets now. Since this is an event for trolls, no ID is required, just bring the hate. Bring the family, Trollfest '07 is for EVERYONE!!!